Your CAS
Your Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) is an essential part of your student visa application, showing details of your planned studies with us.
What is a CAS?
A Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) is a data record created by an education provider who acts as your immigration sponsor in the UK, meaning that they support your visa application. You will need to receive a CAS from the University of Nottingham to make a student visa application for your studies with us.
After confirming your CAS details we will assign the CAS to you as a unique reference number which you must include in your student visa application. This CAS number corresponds with a set of data which the University shares with the UK's Home Office for processing your visa application.
The information recorded in the CAS will include:
- personal details such as your name, date of birth, nationality and passport number
- details about the University of Nottingham including our immigration sponsor licence number (RFDX42DB2)
- course details including the course title, qualification level, start date and course duration
- tuition fees needed for your course, and any fees already paid or scholarships awarded by the University
- qualifications that we have assessed as evidence of your academic qualifications and English language ability
We do not include accommodation fees and accommodation payments in your CAS data so we advise you not to pay these in advance – other than the deposit you will need to pay when booking accommodation.
Your CAS will only include scholarships if they are awarded by the University of Nottingham. We cannot include details of any scholarship awarded by other organisations, even if we have seen evidence of it. You must provide an official sponsorship letter from your scholarship provider within the financial evidence for your visa application.
CAS numbers are only valid for one visa application and expire six months after they are issued.
Receiving your CAS
When we issue a CAS for you, this represents a strong commitment by you to study at the University of Nottingham, and a strong commitment by us to accept you as a student – so we can only issue it to students who meet the following requirements.
Entering a new degree course at Nottingham
New international students don't need to request a CAS. We will prepare a CAS for you once you have:
- firmly accepted your offer to study with us
- met all your offer conditions and received an unconditional offer
- paid any necessary deposits – required for postgraduate taught masters courses and some foundation courses
The earliest we can issue a CAS is six months before your start date, as this is the earliest you can make a student visa application. The latest we can issue a CAS is three working days before the course start date for an academic course, or five working days before the course start date for a presessional English course.
Find out more: 10 steps to obtaining your student visa
Studying multiple courses
If you are taking a presessional English course at our Centre for English Language Education (CELE) before studying a masters degree course at Nottingham, and you have met the UK's minimum English language requirements as well as our academic requirements, we may be able to issue you a combined CAS or 'joint CAS' for both courses.
In other cases where you plan to study more than one course in the UK – such as a presessional English course followed by a degree course, or a foundation course followed by an undergraduate degree course – you will receive a CAS for the first course only. You will then need to extend your visa after successfully completing the first course.
Extending your current course, or transferring to a new course
If you're a current student and you need to extend your visa due to needing more time to complete your current course, or following a course transfer, or for reassessments, you must request a new CAS via the CAS request form.
In most cases, you must also email a copy of the financial evidence for your visa application to our Visa and Immigration Team on immigration-support@nottingham.ac.uk as they must check this for all visa applications by current students before assigning the CAS. This is to ensure your visa application is likely to succeed.
This includes differentiated ('low risk') nationals – who aren't required to submit their financial evidence with the visa application – as you may be asked to submit evidence later in the application process. We will not ask to see financial evidence of students who have existing immigration permission for 12 months prior to their visa application if they are applying in the UK, as they are exempted from meeting the financial requirement of the student visa route.
If you have an outstanding debt to the University or to an approved third party accommodation provider, we will not issue you a CAS.
Find out more: 10-steps to extending your student visa
Verifying your CAS details
When you've met the requirements for a CAS, the University will prepare the data for your CAS and contact you by email when it's available for checking. You can then log into your NottinghamHub account to check and verify your CAS information.
Check all the information in your CAS very carefully. If any information is missing or inaccurate, we need to correct this before you submit your visa application or it could cause your visa to be refused.
You will be prompted "Is all of the information in your CAS correct?" – select "No" if there are any errors, and provide details in the text box. Use this to let us know about any corrections. Please do not contact us by email about them.
There is also a question about whether you will have studied in the UK for more than five years at degree level, due to restrictions on the maximum visa duration available for a student visa. If you answer yes to this question, or if we see from your application details that you have studied in the UK before, we may ask you to complete a questionnaire about your previous studies before we can issue your CAS. You must answer accurately as your visa could be refused if you don't declare details of previous study.
Once you've responded to your CAS within the NottinghamHub, our Visas and Immigration team will review your CAS details and any amendments you provided, and will progress your CAS within the system. Your CAS number will be provided by email, usually within three working days of you checking your CAS details.
A guide to checking your CAS in the NottinghamHub (pdf)
If your visa application is refused, you will usually need to receive a new CAS from us so that you submit a new visa application. You cannot reuse the same CAS for a new application.
Email a copy of your visa refusal notice to immigration-support@nottingham.ac.uk so we can advise you on your next steps, and arrange a new CAS for you if appropriate.
In some cases it may be too late to provide a new CAS and make a new application. The latest we can issue a CAS is three working days before the course start date for an academic course, or eleven working days before the course start date for a presessional English course. This is to prevent students arriving after our registration deadline.
Find out more: late arrival and registration deadlines